


things not covered in parenting 101s

by MemeKonYA



Series: A lifetime of us [4]
Category: Young Avengers
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Future Fic, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Genderfluid Character, Kid Fic, Mpreg, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-23 14:47:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6119800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MemeKonYA/pseuds/MemeKonYA
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“She has your hair,” Tommy jibes, but he’s smiling soft and sweet and holding his niece with so much care Billy doesn’t even try to be mad at him.</p><p>Not that he actually could if he wanted to. He’s floating. Glowing. Possibly literally every now and then.</p><p>The baby scrunches her face then, tickled by her blanket, and suddenly she’s matching it, polka dots and tiny sheep hopping over fences and all, covering the soft skin of her face and her tiny fists and what little other skin her onesie and blanket aren’t covering.</p><p>“She got that from her other daddy, huh?” Tommy laughs, and Billy just blinks at his daughter helplessly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	things not covered in parenting 101s

**Author's Note:**

> 'Precious treasure'

“She has your hair,” Tommy jibes, but he’s smiling soft and sweet and holding his niece with so much care Billy doesn’t even try to be mad at him.

Not that he actually could if he wanted to. He’s floating. Glowing. Possibly literally every now and then.

The baby scrunches her face then, tickled by her blanket, and suddenly she’s matching it, polka dots and tiny sheep hopping over fences and all, covering the soft skin of her face and her tiny fists and what little other skin her onesie and blanket aren’t covering.

“She got that from her other daddy, huh?” Tommy laughs, and Billy just blinks at his daughter helplessly.

 

Teddy is already awake when Billy goes back into their room with their daughter in arms, held lovingly and so so carefully.

Teddy looks haggard, which is a rare look for him. His hair sticks to his forehead, and his usually golden skin looks pale, and there’s bruises under his eyes that look deep and dark. He gives them both a blinding smile, and Billy stops breathing for a few seconds because his husband has never been more gorgeous than at this moment.

He sits down next to Teddy and Teddy reaches out to run his clammy fingers over their daughter’s cheek. She flutters her eyes in her sleep and squirms a little, and suddenly she’s pink and splotchy again. Billy smiles down at her, besotted; next to him, Teddy huffs out a laugh.

“We have a tiny chameleon for a daughter.”

Billy looks up at him, and when Teddy looks back they just… they just stay there, looking at each other, smiling like fools, their baby a squirming bundle between them.

“She’s beautiful,” Billy tells Teddy after a while, and there’s a knot in his throat that’s obvious, choking him a little.

Teddy leans in a kisses him, face sweaty and lips warm and pliant and bitten.

“Of course she is, she’s yours,” Teddy’s words are so tender and sincere and Billy could cry, because life right at this moment, right in this place, with these people? It’s more than magic, it’s perfect, miraculous.

“ _Ours_ ,” Billy corrects him, lets a smile tug on his lips.

“ _Ours_ ,” Teddy agrees, nodding, a smile on his lips that mirrors Billy’s own.

 

Nothing looks better on Teddy than a baby. Billy’s baby. He just looks big and strapping and gentle with her in arms, with her like a tiny frog sprawled on his chest, with her dangling from his hands as he lifts her up to pepper her face with wet, noisy kisses.

Billy catches Teddy looking at the both of them when he’s holding Violet; he goes soft and loose lipped, even when Billy’s changing Vi’s diapers and trying not to get baby poop everywhere. So Billy guesses Teddy must think he looks good with their baby, too.

  

Violet’s a quiet baby. Serious, almost. It makes Billy’s heart clench in worry.

“Do you think she--?”

“She’s a baby,” Teddy interrupts, and leans down to brush a kiss against Billy’s temple. “She’s perfectly happy and bubbly when you bounce her on your knee. Don’t overthink it.”

Billy nods, and Teddy’s lips slip against his skin.

“Hey?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you. A lot.”

Billy feels a wicked smile stretching against his forehead.

“I know.”

Billy bursts out laughing.

“You,” he wheezes out, “giant _geek_.”

“Hey,” Teddy draws back and looks at him with an affected pout, “this _geek_ just had your baby a few weeks ago.”

And that, that’s-- _Christ_.

Billy climbs on top of Teddy, flattens him against the bed, and wipes a few stray laughter tears from his eyes before saying _yes, yes, he did_ , and leaning down to kiss Teddy, deep and dirty and open mouthed.

 

Vi’s powers are volatile. Some days she won’t shift at all, will just stay pink and tiny and wetting all of Billy’s shirts with spit up and making his heart stutter like he’s about to keel over whenever she even moves her tiny fists; other days she’ll look at a particular toy and shift until she matches its color.

Teddy beams a lot. Billy knows that he doesn’t mean to, but he totally does. He gets a prideful glint on his eyes when Vi’s chubby face goes all thoughtful for a few seconds before she just shifts, no inbetween stages and buildup, just like _poof, now i am green_.

Billy claps like it’s a show, and Vi blows happy spit bubbles in his direction, and Teddy _glows_ for a few seconds before he catches himself and flushes like he’s still sixteen and getting caught on Billy’s room after curfew.

“You are allowed, you know?” Billy tells him one afternoon, Vi curled against his chest, gripping the lapel of his shirt in her fist hard enough that it chokes billy a little when she moves around in her sleep. Teddy is boiling Vi’s bottles. “You are allowed to feel proud of her taking after you. That’s parenting 101.”

Teddy ducks his head over the stove, and for a second Billy feels like they are on their parents’ kitchen, sneaking around to make some _them_ time amidst all the other Kaplans (and Tommy, who by the time they graduated was an honorary Kaplan, anyway).

“I just don’t wanna _gloat_ , you know? I don’t wanna be _that_ dad.”

Billy rolls his eyes.

“Teddy, we’ve been _those dads_ since day one. Sorry to inform you.”

Teddy snorts and leans in to peck him on the lips, the touch light but lingering.

“You’re right, we’ve already messed that one up. She’s going to grow up to be perpetually embarrassed of us, isn’t she?”

Billy lets out a mock groan.

“Let’s not think about teenage Vi, at least for a couple of years more, huh?”

Teddy nods in agreement, faking seriousness, but Billy can see the way his lips curl at the sides, and how his eyes crinkle with happiness, and he thinks _mission accomplished_.

 

Teddy lets himself revel in his parental pride after that, and Billy lovingly rolls his eyes at him a lot, because Teddy baby talks praise at Vi and it’s ridiculous. And maybe endearing enough to make him fall in love with his husband all over again every time he does it. That one lacks empirical proof, though, since Billy falls in love again with Teddy every single day, regardless.

(He told Tommy that once, when they were both too drunk to properly filter, and Tommy made noises that were half disgust and half annoyance for like thirty seconds before blurting out ‘you two are the worst, you just, you just ruin this for everyone else, ugh’. Billy had _awww_ ed at him drunkenly until Tommy got mad and kicked his chair. Then they began wrestling like little kids and got kicked out of the bar, and had to walk home leaning on each other.

Billy lets Tommy pretend the night never happened. He’s a great twin.)

 

Violet is eight months, and Billy is giving into his fate as a hopelessly smitten and embarrassing dad and showing some coworkers pics of Vi’s first picnic, a couple days back (and he knows Simmons is uninterested and on the edge of blurting out how little he cares, but he always makes Billy take calls from his spurned one night stands to lie about how _Joshua doesn’t have this number anymore, sorry, no I don’t know how to reach him_ and Billy’s feeling _vindictive_ , so he can deal), when Teddy calls.

“Hi, babe,” Simmons rolls his eyes at him, and throws him one of his own ballpoint pens, Billy doesn’t flip him the bird because he’s the adult here, “is everything okay?”  

“Umm, actually--” Teddy hesitates on the other side of the line, tinny voice strained, “uh, maybe you should come home? If you can?”

Billy’s pulse skyrockets.

“Is Violet--? Are you--’ Have you called the guys?”

He hears some rustling on Teddy’s end, and then Teddy’s talking to someone else, something about _no_ and _don’t chew on that_ , and Billy’s on already on his feet and putting his jacket on, pulling a few of the buttons and making a mess until Simmons slaps his hands away and finishes buttoning him up, fast and efficient, before pushing him down the hall.

“Teddy? Teddy, what’s going on? I’m on my way. Is Vi okay? Please tell me Vi’s okay.” Billy knows he’s rambling, and his hands are shaking, but he can’t stop either of those things.

Teddy curses softly, something tame but heartfelt, and Billy’s got a _swear jar_ on the tip of his tongue but it gets stuck.

“No, no,” Teddy speaks at least, “Vi’s-- uh, Vi’s fine. Everything’s fine. We just, uh. We have a situation? And my husband the Sorcerer Supreme might come in handy right about now.”

“That’s not exactly reassuring, Ted,” Billy says, as he walks through the building’s door and rushes towards an alley.

“Sorry, sorry,” Teddy says, and there’s more rustling on his end and something that sounds suspiciously like a-- but it couldn’t. Billy must be hearing things.

“That’s okay,” Billy tells him, and starts thinking _Iwanttobehome_ over and over as soon as he’s standing between dumpsters. “I’m coming home. You just hold down the fort.”

 

“Is she--?”

“A kitten, yes. I know.”

Billy sits down on the carpet, next to where their daughter is currently walking on wobbly furry legs.

He’s gonna need a drink after this.

“Okay. Umm, I-- Is she okay?”

Violet chooses that moment to trip over her own paws and end up sprawled on the carpet, blinking slowly at Billy like she doesn’t entirely understand what just happened. She mewls at him softly, and it tugs on Billy’s heart.

_Yeah, totally my daughter._

Teddy sits down next to him and gathers Violet on his hands, grimaces a little when she claws him up in her haste to climb up his arm.

“She was having her pureed apples while we watched Animal Planet, and there was this segment about cats, with a kitten litter, and she squealed and next thing I knew, she was like this.”

Billy nods silently at the story, and cups a hand under Vi’s butt when it seems like she’s going to fall from Teddy’s arm, even with Teddy’s other hand on her rump.

“Did you--? As a kid?”

“Sometimes?” Teddy replies to his half unspoken question, “But I was older, maybe four? Five years old? I already knew how to shift back, it was instinctive.”

“Are you worried she’s stuck?” Billy frowns.

Teddy sighs.

“I don’t know. I don’t exactly know how this works.”

“Okay,” Billy leans into Teddy, head on his shoulder, “maybe we can consult with someone who does?”

Teddy shifts around under him until they’re more or less curled into each other, Violet still trying to climb up her dad’s arm.

“Xavin? We don’t know how to get a hold of them. They are still in hiding with the rest of the Runaways.”

“Good thing you married the Sorcerer Supreme then, right?”

“Locating spell?”

“Locating spell.”

Violet butts her head against Billy’s hand and meows softly, and Billy takes that as her agreeing with their plan.

 

Xavin looks a little pissed to be suddenly summoned into their living room; Karolina looks completely unsurprised.

“Hi?”

_Smooth, Kaplan._

_Wait: smooth, Kaplan-Altman._

_Better._

Karolina gives him a sincere albeit strained smile.

“Not that we aren’t glad to see you, guys, but we were in the middle of something.”

Billy cringes. Teddy shrugs at him, helplessly. Xavin seems uninterested in the conversation, eyes trained on Vi, curled into a ball on Teddy’s hands, tail covering up half of her face, ears twitching every now and then.

“Is that--” Xavin asks, pointing at Vi. “Is that a _hatchling_?”

Karolina’s smile drops and her eyebrows furrow, as she turns to Teddy. Her eyebrows dip even further when all she can see is the tiny striped, orange and cream kitten that their eight month old daughter’s currently decided to be.

“A _hatchling_ ? What do you mean a _hatchling_ ? Like, a _baby_ ? Is that your _baby_?”

“That’s kinda the reason we called you, guys,” Teddy interrupts.

“Now might be a good moment to offer me something to drink,” Karolina tells Billy, and plops herself onto their sofa.

Billy gives her shoulder a friendly squeeze before leaving for the kitchen. Karolina is probably going to appreciate Teddy’s fancy herbal teas more than he ever did.

 

“So it’s a normal stage in skrull hatchlings’ development?” Billy inquiries for the hundredth time.

Xavin rolls their eyes, mouth full of Billy’s mom’s babka; Karolina elbows them, and picks daintily on her own cake.

“It is,” Xavin says finally, after swallowing, “it is a normal and expected stage for a healthy hatchling. They are putting their abilities to the test. Like one of your human hatchlings’ little feats of strength.”

Teddy melts into his chair, right next to Billy’s. Violet is sleeping on her bouncy chair, still a tiny ball of fluff.

“And she isn’t stuck?” Teddy asks again.

Xavin looks at Teddy like they can’t honestly believe his existence. In a less kinder way than Billy generally intends it.

“Of course she is not stuck. This is her inheritance. She is simply comfortable, stretching herself, testing her limits. Skrull hatchlings are remarkably resilient and intuitive. If she feels the need to shift back or simply desires to, she will.”

Billy looks at Violet, then. She does seem particularly comfortable and unbothered.

Xavin eats the rest of their babka in silence, and Karolina takes over the conversation by asking about Violet with genuine interest. When Billy shows her pictures on his phone, she seems much more enthusiastic than any of his coworkers, and when he sneaks a glance to Teddy, Teddy smiles at him, conspiratorial, and they both chance a tiny glance at Xavin, who’s taken to gazing raptly at Karolina as she flicks through the pictures and coos and giggles.

Vi shifts back a few minutes after they bid the couple goodbye. She’s unscathed and in good spirits and hungry enough that they have to give her two bottles and a jar of her baby food.

Teddy still tells Billy that they’re maybe not watching Animal Planet for the foreseeable future.

Billy laughs and presses a sloppy kiss to his husband’s lips, and then a noisier one to his daughter’s cheek.

**Author's Note:**

> [ Come and hang out with me on tumblr!](http://memekon.tumblr.com)


End file.
